Wait… and the patient dies – a Royal warning

Prince Charles wasn’t shy of saying it how he sees it as a two day conference for forest scientists this week.

Well-known for his passion for environmental concerns, the Prince of Wales took the opportunity to publically criticise the “corporate lobbyists” and those sceptical of climate change.

During the speech at St James’ Palace, he compared the earth to a ‘dying patient’ and warned ‘the risk of delay is so enormous that we can’t wait until we are absolutely sure the patient is dying.”

Like the audience at the conference, we warmly welcome the Prince’s stance and his assertion that the world’s corporates must take responsibility for leading action on climate change.

Organic Energy is a member of The Prince’s MayDay Network. This amazing organisation brings together businesses across the UK committed to taking action to protect the environment.

The first Mayday Summit took place in 2007, organised by Community at the request of Prince Charles. More than 1,000 business leaders made more than 5,500 pledges to take action on climate change.

At last year’s summit, held in Wales, the MayDay Network launched its ’9 billion challenge’ to focus on the wider aspects of responsible business, delivering both social and environmental impact in order to foster long-term sustainability.

Wales Director for Business in the Community, Simon Harris said at the event: “By 2050, 9 billion people will be living on our planet. Continuing with business as usual and our current levels of consumption will mean that 50 per cent of people will be living in poverty or dispossessed. The question for business is will your products survive and thrive in this context?”

This is a question which the corporate giants are yet to answer fully – greenwash and fiddling around the edges aside.

Big changes are needed. A fundamental shifts in attitude is required. We need to crack open a debate which is not just about global warming and ethical shopping.

Prince Charles this week took the opportunity to remind these global businesses of what they are risking by not collaborating and committing to action on climate change. We hope it didn’t fall on deaf ears.

 

No sooner said….

Our most recent blog took a stance on the Big Six profits and dared to mention the introduction of the Renewable Heat Incentive, planned for summer 2013.

Within days, it was announced that there was a delay and this was actually the timescale for when the Government was going to start talking about it in earnest.

Organic Energy managing director Andy Boroughs was approached by the media for his reaction.

We thought we’d share his comments here on the blog too.

Although he welcomed the year long extension to the RHPP, Mr Boroughs said: 

“I don’t find a delay to the time frame for the development of a domestic RHI to be a particular surprise, given the Government’s history with regard to incentives for renewables.

“And I do think that a health warning to both householders and the industry should be attached to this news, in the sense that we still only have a timetable, not the detail of any resulting scheme.

“The non-domestic RHI has been a useful way of getting businesses to take a serious look at the real benefits of micro generation, with the added knowledge that there is a genuine, supporting incentive and we have to hope that,
in time, this may do the same in the domestic arena.

“But experience has taught many of us that the goal posts have a tendency to be moved on a regular basis and we should be promoting our technology and services based on their genuine strengths and benefits, with Government
incentives seen as a bonus if, and when, they materialise.”

 

 

 

Big Six count profits as families count the pennies…

Bills are going up. Gas and electricity are expensive. We all know this, and to an certain extent, we’ve accepted it too.

Many householders are at the point where hearing about yet another gas bill rise elicits no more than yet another sigh. And the ‘huge hike in electricity prices’ headlines barely seems to raise an eyebrow.

But hold on a minute…. the latest prediction from the energy watchdog concerning the UK’s six biggest power suppliers should not be simply accepted with a shrug of the shoulders.

Energy regulator Ofgem is predicting that the Big Six will draw a £110 profit out of every domestic property over the next 12 months. That more than triples their margins.

According to the Sunday Times, Ofgem says the average annual gas and electricity bill next year is £1,420, with an estimated £110 profit per household. In 2012, the average bill was £1,310.

Now we accept that this is a prediction – and that the energy companies explain the figures away as a “snapshot estimate” of profitability over the next year.

But this is profiteering on the back of hard-working families struggling in a tough economy. This is the UK’s largest power suppliers topping up the coffers while the cost of energy on the wholesale market has dropped.

It is heartening to hear that the Energy and Climate Change Committee is looking into the figures. The Government has launched an inquiry to investigate the profits of six energy companies amid complaints that householders were paying too much to heat their homes.

Committee chairman Tim Yeo says: “The suspicion of consumers is the power companies are exploiting the market to their own advantage.”

Ofgem says: “Trust in energy suppliers can only be restored if suppliers give a full and transparent explanation of price and profits to their customers.”

Organic Energy says: “The only real way to halt the crisis, of not only rising bills but scarcity of energy supplies, is to consider the alternative.”

With the proposed introduction of the Renewable Heat Incentive for domestic installations later this year, thousands of householders may be about to discover what many of Organic Energy’s customers are already reporting – that the incentive in some cases more than covers the cost of the wood pellet fuel for their boilers.

So ironically, the alternative could see householders making a profit on their source of energy. Now wouldn’t that be a turnaround…..

 

Education, education…..

The school children of today are the business leaders of tomorrow. That’s why we send them into the classroom where they study English, maths and science, languages and a host of other subjects to prepare them for the world of work.

Youngsters at Stadhampton Primary School, where Organic Energy installed an OkoFEN wood pellet boiler

But the likelihood is that the world will be a very different place to the one we grew up in. My generation took oil and gas heating for granted, we had no idea what an energy efficient light bulb looked like, there was one bin in the kitchen – and everything went in it.

For today’s youngsters, recycling is second nature. They know better the meaning of waste. And perhaps more easily accept the sight of the towering white turbines stretched out across swathes of our country’s landscape.

But is this osmosis-like learning about sustainability enough? Or do we need to be more pro-active in the way our children learn about the environmental challenges they will inevitably face as our natural resources deplete and our landfill sites fill?

In primary school, children are taught that they should care for the environment. Green issues are taught in secondary schools as part of the science curriculum, covering subjects such as pollution, biotechnology, fossil fuels and energy.

In two decades from now, when these youngsters are running businesses, directing company operations and indeed, teaching the next generation, will they wish we had taught them more about what steps needed to be taken to protect the world’s resources?

We at Organic Energy think so. And that has to start now, and not just with young people. Yes, when we commission a wood pellet boiler in a school, we work with teachers to include the installation as part of a learning opportunity.

We also engage with university and Masters students, about the challenges facing the renewable energy sector. And we hold continuous professional development events for architects and specifiers and training courses for
installers, providing education and sharing knowledge from the classroom to the construction site and from the drawing board to the board of directors.

But ours is not the only company which is doing its bit to educate. Unilever, Pepsi and Wal-Mart have all topped the list of corporations rolling-out schemes to lessen their impact on the environment. In the UK, they were led by
Marks & Spencer with its Plan A – a pioneering green statement of intent, perhaps recognising ahead of its time that its future customers would be influenced by the greening of corporate policy.

But with an up-and-coming, internet-savvy generation which learns to use a smartphone at the same time as a knife and fork, it may be the phenomenon of social networking on sites such as Facebook and Twitter which most raises
awareness of environmental challenges; a viral education allowing collective debate and information sharing among like minds.

Extended chills highlight nation’s energy ills

Sometimes it takes extreme circumstances to focus the mind on an issue. The current cold snap has done just that, bringing the rising costs of energy into sharp focus.

It’s easy to bumble along as the price of heating homes and offices and powering industry keeps nudging up quarter by quarter. We grumble, blame the energy companies and governments, but essentially do very little. Most people don’t even shop around energy suppliers because, let’s face it, they all move their prices pretty much in line with each other anyway…

But when there is a consistent freeze, with older people trapped in their homes by snow and ice and forced to keep the heating turned up, then the cost of energy and its immediate and direct impact on daily life really becomes a concern.

According to The Times newspaper, this situation has today prompted a reaction from a group of more than 100 charities, businesses and, er, energy companies. Apparently a letter leaked to the newspaper suggests these organisations are warning the Prime Minister that a fuel poverty crisis looms because of the failures of his Government.

Now, the more cynical among us might have to put aside for the moment thoughts of an agenda by the energy companies in backing such a call (they wouldn’t mind less demand on them to fund sustainable power, for example), but there’s no denying that this group has a fairly strong point overall.

The measures we have had announced so far (the Green Deal and the Energy Company Obligation) seem to be little more than fiddling around the edges, massaging apparent financial benefits for some people, in certain circumstances. They don’t amount to the mass insulation of a stock of ageing homes or the embracing of the more sensible, high technology approaches to sustainable energy. It feels like more of the same old, same old with some frills and window dressing.

There are so many ideas out there either waiting to be tried or which are already tried and tested and are just straining to be put to better and wider use – such as community heating projects and other approaches to more localised collaboration. Anything that causes less reliance on the gang of big energy suppliers might be seen as welcome.

Technology continues to make renewable and micro generation more and more capable of delivering heat and power. We make no apology for highlighting here the amazing efficiency of our world-leading ÖkoFEN wood pellet boilers. They are not just another method for burning wood as a fuel, they are a thoughtfully engineered and tremendously efficient user of the fuel that goes into them and they are just one example of how we can diversify the ways we meet our energy needs.

We don’t exist as a company to be political but we do work very hard to be practical. Unfortunately that’s something our current government is not achieving, with vacillating energy policies that make everyone in the sector nervous of making any firm decisions and which seem to run scared of taking any bold turns.

So if it takes a letter to the PM signed by the good, the bad and the downright ugly who can all see, from their varied standpoints, that we’re not getting this right as a country, the rest of us can only hope that our political leaders are paying attention – for the sake of those freezing pensioners, if no-one else.

Welsh guesthouse wins top renewable energy award

We’re delighted for guesthouse owners John and Ceilia Whitehead who have just  scooped a top tourism award. And we’re particularly pleased as the award, from the Welsh Assembly-supported Gwynedd Taste and Tourism scheme, was
for Renewable Project of the Year.

One of the key renewable energy installations at the Whiteheads’ guesthouse, Bryn Elltyd, is an Organic Energy-supplied wood pellet boiler, installed by Menai Heating, of Anglesey.

The 25Kw ÖkoFEN Pellematic was fitted into a purpose-built boiler house with a fabric pellet store at the six-bedroom guesthouse, which has been run by the couple since 2006.

It was the first project in Wales to be accredited under the Renewable Heat Incentive in 2012 and the ÖkoFEN boiler was the latest in a number of renewable energy installations completed at the property, near Blaenau Ffestiniog, in recent years.

There are detached turf roofed rooms, lined with sheep’s wool, and their own solar thermal panels and rainwater harvesting. Celia and John’s own trees provide some of the timber for two advanced log burners and also the lumber which was used to build the main dining table. There’s also two electric vehicle charging points for guests arriving in their hybrid and electric cars… the list goes on.

The award also followed a shortlisting as a finalist in the national Renewables Awards in September, in the Energy Efficiency Project category and the couple have recently been awarded a Gold award from the Green Tourism Business
Scheme.

It appears work isn’t slowing down on the sustainable initiatives – within the last few weeks the Whiteheads have double glazed the conservatory with locally crafted local plastic from one mile away and they are also working on a
15m square mountain bike/electric bike/electric buggy store, built with timber and slate and an alpine plant sedum roof.

Congratulations Ceilia and John – and to see more about this amazing green place to stay, visit www.ecoguesthouse.co.uk

Taking the temperature of the bioenergy business

The bioenergy sector is an exciting place to be. That might not be a phrase that rolls off everyone’s lips, but for us it’s absolutely true.

There’s an impetus in the industry that has been building for years and is now starting to find its outlet as more individuals and organisations, not to mention politicians, start to take the various sustainable options for our future energy needs more seriously.

That’s why we’re particularly looking forward to a couple of big days in the calendar for us bioenergy types – the combined nextgen exhibition and European Bioenergy Expo and Conference (EBEC).

The great and the good of the sector will gather at the Royal Showground, in Stoneleigh, Warwickshire, on October 10^th and 11^th to demonstrate products, share knowledge and generally gauge the state of the bioenergy nation.

In world where we’re all so busy not just selling products but spreading ideas and an ethos to a wider audience, this is our chance to take stock, take the temperature of the sector and feed off each other’s progress and enthusiasm.

It’s also a chance to learn, with a conference programme that will share the latest policy, highlight what’s working for our sector and what is not and generally keep everyone in the same loop on the big picture issues.

We’ve had bumps in the road for the sector this year, particularly with regard to Feed-In Tariffs, and there are still many areas where the industry needs regulators to move more quickly (just ask our colleagues in anaerobic digestion) but opportunities for us to debate these matters as one are rare, yet important.

That’s why we’re looking forward to walking the lanes of the exhibition and tuning in to the conference presentations and discussions.

Knowledge and technology in bioenergy continues to develop apace. It’s time is here and the opportunity to immerse ones self in what will hopefully be an event driven by positivity is irresistible. Oh, and there’s no substitute for having a good nosey at what everyone else is up to!